IT'S BEEN NINE MONTHS SINCE THE FIRST ARTICLE IN THIS SERIES was published. If you have been following the series and doing the exercises, take a moment and reflect on how your thinking might have changed as a result. Is there an area of your life where you may feel more empowered now than you did 9 months ago? Do you know yourself a bit better than you did before reading the series?

It is my belief that the most important step to authentic re-empowerment is knowledge of the self. Remember the idea presented in part one that the infant possesses authentic power, which is gradually given away in exchange for external power? Our task as we move through life is to reclaim that lost power through discovering our unconscious programming and choosing to change those beliefs and assumptions that disempower us.

In this final installment of the series, I would like to introduce you to a philosophy developed by the late Dr. John Whitman Ray, founder of the discipline of Body Electronics. I have found his scale of emotions and his concept of “resistance” most helpful in my process of uncovering unconscious programming and knowing myself.

Emotions Are The Key
Our emotions can be seen as the energy forces that power our lives. The top of the “scale of emotions” as presented by John Whitman Ray is enthusiasm, also known as unconditional love. We’ve all experienced enthusiasm and it’s amazing what we can get done when we enthusiastically embrace a task. Enthusiasm is the spark that propels us forward.

Unfortunately, few of us can consistently maintain the emotion of enthusiasm. We resist certain feelings or experiences because we have judged them as unpleasant in some way. Resistance happens whenever we identify with one side of a duality, labeling it good and avoid its opposite, labeling it bad. For example, if we think a bright, sunshiny day is good and embrace it with enthusiasm, we are happy on bright, sunshiny days. However, if we resist dreary, rainy days and label them bad, we are no longer enthusiastic and happy on those days. Our resistance reduced our enthusiasm/unconditional love.

Much of our life is dominated with emotions that are less than enthusiastic, simply because we have judged certain experiences as good and others as bad. We build up reactive patterns to the experiences we’ve labeled bad. This is our “programming” and it inevitably leads us downwards on the scale of emotions.

The Scale of Emotions
Enthusiasm or unconditional love is at the top of the scale and happens when there is no resistance. Because we are not resisting anything at this level, we are also at a high state of awareness. Awareness allows us to fully experience the moment, gaining all that it has to offer.

The next level is pain. At its most basic, pain is sensation. We react to it negatively and judge it as unpleasant… therefore we immediately resist it. If we could embrace pain with enthusiasm, we would quickly move through it, without creating the reactive pattern that we think will help us avoid pain in the future. According to the Body Electronics writings by John Whitman Ray and others, people have on occasion injured themselves severely, embraced the pain with enthusiasm, and very quickly show no more signs of the original injury. When we are in a state of pain we still retain awareness, though our instinct may be to repress that awareness as quickly as possible, in order to get rid of the pain.

As we resist our pain, we move down to the next level, which is anger. At this level, we completely identify with one side of the duality/polarity. We are right and the opposite of our belief/feeling/thought is wrong. We will justify anything when we are in a state of anger and resist awareness of the opposite point of view.

Below the level of anger we always find fear. When we are in a state of fear, our resistance has reached the point where we just want to run away. We become less aware of how we are the cause of our circumstances and feel more like the effect, hence the desire to escape.

Next is the level of grief. When we are in the state of grief, we feel like victims, powerless to affect our circumstances. “Poor me” is the classic expression of victim consciousness and we have very little awareness of our personal power.

When our resistance increases even more, we move into the level of apathy. At this level, we truly feel powerless and our expression can be summed up in the words “I can’t”. We are at a point where we simply cease caring as a way of protecting the self.

Eventually apathy leads to unconsciousness. Our awareness at this level is non-existent…we don’t even realize anymore that we are resisting anything. This can lead to a kind of “pseudo-enthusiasm”. We tell ourselves we are happy though usually our body language will indicate otherwise. We have no power because we have no awareness that we have suppressed and resisted our experiences. Word patterns at this level are “I don’t know and I don’t want to know”.

Moving Up The Scale
If resistance is what moves us down the scale of emotions, then it stands to reason that moving back up is a process of letting go of resistances. However, we can’t let go of what we can’t remember. Thus the inner work consists of bringing memories to consciousness and re-experiencing the original emotions that accompanied the memories. When we re-experience an emotion, we can also examine our resistance to the original emotion/experience. This gives us an opportunity to choose differently…we can now choose to embrace the emotion/experience enthusiastically instead of resisting it.

This inner work is an important part of knowing the self. The more we process our past experiences and let go of our resistances, the more we will see how we created reactive patterns in response to our experiences. We will begin to notice where we have resisted and what the effects of those resistances were. We begin to realize that our resistances and reactive patterns color our perceptions.

No one operates from the emotional state of enthusiasm at all times. By the same token, no one is totally in unconsciousness at all times. Where we are on the scale of emotions will vary, depending on what aspect of our lives we’re looking at.

If these concepts are new to you, you may find them difficult to understand at first. It took me a while to get a grasp on how resistance to experience erodes our personal power. To make things a little easier to understand, let’s take a look at a hypothetical case study.

A Case of Unconsciousness
Edith grew up in a family where violence was the norm. Like all babies, she had enthusiasm for life, but when she felt physical discomfort like hunger or cold, she cried… at first with enthusiasm! However, her parents punished her whenever she cried so she quickly moved down the scale of emotions. At first she felt pain (Ouch, that hurts!), then anger (Why are they hurting me?), then fear (I just want to run away from this pain). Because she was still very small, running away was not an option, so with repeated experiences of violence, she moved down into grief (I’m a victim and the world is a harsh place.), then into apathy (There’s nothing I can do) and finally into unconsciousness (This isn’t really happening.)

The abusive incidents took place throughout Edith’s childhood, and the way she coped with them emotionally was through denial and unconsciousness. By the time Edith moved away from home, she barely remembered her childhood and seemed on the surface to be a well-adjusted, normal individual, other than the fact that she was a bit of a loner and a little shy. She generally aimed to please everyone and went along with whatever she was told to do, since she had very little awareness of her own wants and needs.

Edith married Eric, a man who was much like her parents… domineering and violent when angry. Edith had very little power in the relationship, but she was generally unaware of her powerlessness. When she developed terminal cancer at the age of 25, circumstances brought Edith to an alternative healing center where the focus was on healing the emotional and mental bodies as well as the physical body.

The months that followed were very difficult for Edith. Her therapy included periodic sessions where she was encouraged to remember her past experiences and relive the emotions of those experiences. At first she resisted this very strongly, denying to herself that she had any issues in her past. Then she slowly started moving up the scale of emotions.

First came the realization that she had been abused. Her initial reaction was “I can’t do anything about it.” At this point she had moved from unconsciousness into apathy. With continued encouragement from her facilitators, she was able to move up into grief and experience the feelings of being a victim. From grief she moved into fear… she wanted to run away from the therapy and go back into unconsciousness. After being encouraged to really feel that fear, she started experiencing anger. She was able to express anger at her parents for their treatment of her, which led her to the feelings of pain. By not resisting the pain and allowing herself to fully experience it through tears, she finally moved into enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm was a new experience for Edith. It was like a tremendous weight was lifted from her shoulders and she could experience life with an entirely different perception. She started the healing process and after a few more clearing sessions, her cancer went into remission. She chose to leave her abusive husband and empowered herself to start a new life on her own.

Reclaiming Your Power
The path to self-empowerment is not an easy one. In these articles I have presented some ideas and suggested some ways to get you started, but each of us is different and has his or her own unique path to follow.

In closing, I’d like to briefly summarize what I think are some of the key points to consider on the journey to self-empowerment:

1) Become aware of your beliefs and how they influence your perceptions. Think about the saying: “Seeing is believing.” Perhaps it is equally valid to say: “Believing is seeing.”

2) Become aware of your emotions. If they are anything other than enthusiasm, what are you resisting?

3) Be willing to re-examine your past and memories you may have suppressed. Areas of unconsciousness represent areas you are unaware of, but that doesn’t mean they don’t influence you.

4) Be willing to walk away from situations that rob you of your personal power.

5) Be willing to let go of control over others. Trying to control others is usually as sign of fear and resistance. We cannot be self-empowered when we are trying to control others.

6) Be willing to feel your feelings without resistance. Embrace all emotions with enthusiasm. When you are angry, for example, really feel the anger. When you are in pain, be willing to fully experience the pain. Remember, it is the judgment of our feelings that causes the resistances that inhibit our personal power.

7) Connect with all the aspects of yourself. Get to know your inner child, your logical adult and your spiritual or higher self. Work on integrating the three into a harmonious unit.

8) Examine those areas in your life where you are not yet self-empowered and see what choices you have made that you may be willing to change.

9) Know the difference between self-empowerment and self-isolation. Ideally, when we are self-empowered, we connect more fully with others rather than less. Intimacy is the product of two self-empowered individuals willing to be totally seen and known by each other.

10) Understand that it isn’t so much what happens to us in life, but how we deal with it that matters.

11) Be willing to be “cause” rather than “effect” in your life. This means taking full responsibility for your words, thoughts and deeds. It also means never seeing yourself as a victim of circumstances.

12) “Dance in your passion and play in your joy.” These words, channeled from “The Group” by Steve Rother, are another way of living your life with enthusiasm. We can only do that when we let go of our resistances!

Thank you for joining me in this series of articles. May you live a life filled with authentic power and enthusiasm!

© 2002 Tys Dammeyer

Artwork by Rene K. Mueller, SpiritArt.Org

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